Red Rabbit
by QAE
Summary: Once upon a time, the samurai of Edo spun promises on their sword-tips, and a little night rabbit dipped her hands into the red of a precious rose. (time travel fic, gen, Kagura-centric)
1. Most Prologues Suck at Foreshadowing

**Warning(s):** AU, time travel fic, violence, language, forever GEN, Kagura-centric

**Alternate Summary:** n/a

**Author's Note:** I am in a Gintama phase. My other fic, FtS, is currently on-hold as I try to get back into KHR and fend off this writer's block. This story won't be epic, won't even come close to more than 5000 words per chapter like FtS, but it's a good way to show my adoration for Gintama because _aaaah Gintama I cannot even. _Also, I'm ignoring all of the events that happened in the most recent movie, _Be Forever Yorozuya, _because I don't live in Japan so I can't watch it.

**Disclaimer:** I do not own _Gintama_.

* * *

_At 11:30 pm, the world starts to spin._

There are people running, here and there and everywhere, but it's too dark to see where their feet fall or where the pillars have fallen down. It's all black. Something is wrong with the electricity panels, and in the labyrinth of pipeworks and pinging metals, members and refugees are far too easily misplaced.

Dust and rubble rain down instead of cats or dogs or spears. The tunnels are shivering. There are tremors shaking the earth, and there are stronger ones are shaking the roof-tiles, but the strongest ones are wracking through the children's bodies and tearing them apart. It is this fear - this overwhelming, smothering fear that clogs the air and wraps around them in blankets that makes the situation so much worse.

Shadows are running. They pound against the dirt and scramble up the platforms. Her vision blurs in and out, over and over.

_At 11:35 pm, it starts to rain._

This rain is worse than the shower of dirt, because it clings to your clothes and seeps through your boots. It wraps a tight, warm hand around your throat and plunges into your stomach. It smells like something akin to death, but is much more synonymous to pain.

This rain is the rhythm of a thousand bodies collapsing to the floor. The sound of a thousand corpses is quite strong, strong enough to speed up the own beat of your heart as if it is afraid of slowing down.

She and her samurai leap across the pipes, and some of them stop to help an injured child or a screaming woman. She continues without them, dearly hoping they will return to her, and a little piece of her heart bursts into flame when she has to remind herself not to look back.

_At 11:42 pm, the enemy engages them._

Her warriors are quick to block the attacks, but there are too many silver swords flashing in the dark. They are outnumbered. She recognizes this in an instant, and she knows she can fight hard enough to even out the odds before collapsing, but her safety is their first priority. They shove her away.

"You're our last hope, Leader," one of them says, a bright youth with fiery eyes and wounds ribboned around his shoulders.

Her soul is burning up. She wants to stay. What good is a commander if she has no people to follow her?

But those stupid samurai won't let her. They're too brash, and they have yet to understand the difference between bravery and idiocy. They don't understand that she is not important at all compared to them, because they are the ones who die in order to save her. She is dead weight and despicable.

"Go! Please, go! Hurry!"

Her eyes are smoldering. She abandons them.

_At 11:53 pm, the survivors reach their destination._

She is busy snapping out orders, biting the blood from her tongue, and snarling out commands in a guttural voice that changes pitch every couple of seconds (but nobody points it out). They've been found out, so there's been a spy in their group. It doesn't particularly matter now, and definitely not at this moment, but all she wants to do right now is hunt down the rat that dared to feast upon their innocents.

Some of the refugees have been taken to the storage rooms, which are located in the deepest pits of their headquarters. Most of them won't survive. The soldiers sent to protect them won't survive, either. The rest of the refugees are currently making their way through one of the escape tunnels, but it won't be long before those collapse, too. The airships outside have been firing at precise points - their weakest ones.

Damn that spy. And damn herself, for not foreseeing this.

She and the others burst into the laboratory section, where the experimental weapons are kept. That's not what they're after, though. It's too late for them to retaliate, and those weapons have too much of a backfire to be used properly, anyway.

They're after the room with white tiles, the room that holds their greatest invention, the room she hates with every inch of her being.

_At 11:54 pm, she tries for another argument._

It is futile, and everyone knows it. She will go along with this plan whether she likes it or not because it is their only option left besides death. The enemy is hot on their heels.

"I need to stay," she says. "The people of Edo need me."

"The people of Edo are almost gone. We are the last. Please, Leader."

Her fear is a growling, roaring, menacing thing. "Anyone who survives here will need me. They'll die without help. Our help."

"It's too late for that!"

"Please, Leader - this way, we might be able to save everyone!"

She takes a deep breath to suppress the scream inside her and smashes her fist against the wall. "As soon as we are in," she says. "As soon as it's activated, all of you are going to get out. Don't bother sticking around to see if we survive. Understand?"

The smiles of her samurai are bittersweet. "Yes, sir," they say.

_At 11:56 pm, ten people are seated around a machine with glowing lights and strange wires that connect to their skin._

The ten others who aren't hooked up are operating at the control panels. There are lots of levers and buttons and green graphs that need to be looked at. Distantly, she hears the howl of fire and thunder and the anguish of the people she has failed.

"Leader," the man next to her gasps. His face is drenched with sweat. He is so, so scared. "Leader, I - "

She hushes him, as soothing as a mother can be. "It'll be alright," she says in reassurance. "Everything will be fine, you'll see, it'll all turn out okay..."

"What if-" He gulps for air. "What if it doesn't? What if the...the travel isn't completed, or something goes wrong, and we're trapped in here and they f-find us? What if-"

"Yamamoto," she says, because she wouldn't have any right to call herself the Leader if she doesn't know the names of her strongest warriors. "Don't think about depressing things like that. Try..." She gestures into the air with one hand. "Try looking forward to a brighter future. A future where everything is fine, and always will be."

Before Yamamoto can respond, the men at the control panels look up. "TTM07 has begun the activation process," they announce.

It might just be her, but the gunfire sounds closer. "Hurry," she urges them.

"Memory and cell transfer activated. Life forms are being processed. It's taking too - no, alright, life forms are now approved. Seventeen seconds until data is processed and travel is enabled."

_At 11:57 pm, one of her samurai runs up to her._

"Won't be long now," he pants. "You'll be sent along soon enough."

"Thank you, Akarasu," she says, and means it. She will be grateful to them for an eternity.

Despite the redness that drips down one of his eyes and the laughable despair of their situation, Akarasu beams bright at her. "No problem, Leader," he says. Two of his fingers tap against his forehead in a salute. "It's been a pleasure fighting beside you."

She nods once. "Likewise."

Behind them, the door begins to shriek. Something is pounding against it. The frame, the steel frame that isn't supposed to break, is cracking where it meets the door. "Shit," Yamamoto says, because they have to leave right now or all of them will be royally screwed, without exception.

"We're good to go!" Someone shouts, and the hatch above her begins to lower. Abruptly, a flutter of panic has her shaking in her seat, body rebelling against her will.

"Leader," Akarasu says, and then stops, like he doesn't know what to say afterward.

She smiles through clenched teeth. "Good luck," she says, raising her voice. "Good luck, all of you! Now get out of here!"

They flee, and she watches as they fly through the back door and the glints of their sword hilts blink out of existence. The pounding against the door is unbearably loud. She closes her eyes and focuses on the breathing of the nine other people connected to the machine, listens to their heartbeats until the hatches lock in place with a distinctive hiss. Then, she can't hear anything.

_At 11:58, she closes her eyes._

There is a tingling sensation running through her body. Something small and heavy is pressing against the center of her forehead. When she looks up, though, there is nothing there.

The Leader is terrified.

Instead of screaming and shattering glass and fighting all the way through, she closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. Instead of looking on in horror as the door bursts open and enemy soldiers stream in, heading for the control panels, she empties her head and wipes the world away.

There is a muffled banging against her hatch. She ignores it.

Her mind is colored silver.

_At 11:59, she has the sudden impression that something has just gone very, very wrong._

But it's too late by then.


	2. 30-Second Intervals are Significant

**Warning(s):** AU, time travel fic, violence, language, forever GEN, Kagura-centric

**Alternate Summary:** n/a

**Author's Note:** This is angst but hey, you were totally warned in the category section. Also, IT GETS BETTER FROM HERE. KIND OF. Hurting before healing, right?  
I almost regret putting this chapter up on FF, because now it feels like I have some sort of obligation to actually update the thing. Damn it. (At least this makes for an entertaining hobby, somewhat!) (:

Psst - this fic does not go in the direction you want it to go! You should totally read on anyway!

**Disclaimer:** I do not own _Gintama_.

* * *

_"I should have told him," he says as she approaches._

_She brings her feet and hands together, feeling quite small in front of this man and his cherry blossoms, and does not ask which words should have been spoken. They are not meant for her ears. Instead, she asks him, "If you had, what would have happened?"_

_"He would have laughed, maybe," the man says, bowed as a bow. His voice, lost as it is, gives her the impression that he's no longer thinking about whatever words drop from his mouth. "Or tried to beat my head in for giving up 'so soon'. I don't know anymore."_

_"Oh." Had you ever known, she wonders, but the question is never asked._

_"I should've told him anyway, though. As if he would die the next day."_

_"He really did," she tells him, as if he needs the reminder._

_"I know," the man replies, as if she needs the acknowledgement._

_Here, there is only a single grave, and yet they are confronted by thousands of the deceased and must lay their souls bare for them. It's the least they can do, now. So she doesn't bother with the comfort, the encouragement - and as for the misery that ought to follow? They're too far gone for that. "It would've been too perfect, if you'd told him," she says, then. "It would've broken a promise."_

_"Don't go dilusional, now. We never made anything of the sort."_

_"It was an invisible promise. We all made ones of our own, see, and they tied around our hearts like threads. So whenever someone went up into the sky - "_

_To demonstrate, she plucked a scarlet hair from her head and weaved it around her fingers. In the corner of her eye she can see the man's face, round and pale, following her. "- a thread gets broken off like this, and that's why it hurts when people pass away," she finishes._

_He makes a little sound that's rather rough. It sounds like tones bubbling up and coming out in little waves. "Who said that? You?"_

_"No. The children."_

_"Children don't speak death in poetics."_

_"Their mothers told it to them."_

_"Well," he says after a while - a while in which she waits with utmost patience, knowing he will eventually reply. "It's a nice thought, I suppose."_

_The man turns, and suddenly, all she sees is a little boy who can no longer afford to hate. "But see here, China," he says. "Now that your father is dead, there's no proof that a promise ever existed anymore."_

* * *

At 12:00 p.m, in an abandoned warehouse near the outskirts of Edo's suburbs, the leader awakens.

Black spots dart around her eyelids. She feels sick, as if a heavy weight has sunk into her stomach and made itself a nest, and a snake is coiled up, rattling against her throat. And so when she tries to sit up, to percieve the world around her in its entirety, limbs trembling, heart racing - the most she can do is breathe.

And then stare, silently, at the walls of the warehouse around her. The sunlight filtering through the cracks in the doorway illuminates the dust, pasting butterflies onto the ground. There is a lingering smell of ash.

The white room is gone. The rain and the thunder are gone, vanished into the white noise of the world.

And her samurai?

The leader turns her head. She sees nine men lying on the ground, sprawled against their sword sheaths; eyes closed, lips pale. But that isn't what bothers her most, because their silhouettes are blurred and distorted around the edges.

Silence roars in her ears.

And this silence is not peaceful, nor content. It is not beautiful. It is a screaming and a thrashing all together in one muted sound, and it fills her up inside and crushes the inside of her soul, just a little. This silence is hard to keep quiet, because all of the noise is restless and waiting to burst out of her being.

It feels like something is pressing against her lungs, adding the slight hitch to her breath; trying to drown this one, maybe.

"Lea...der?"

Propping herself up onto her elbows, she catches sight of Yamamoto. "Ah," she says. "Yamamoto?"

It is phrased as a question, of course, but she doesn't need to ask the future for what's going to come next.

The man's limbs are splayed out. They look like the points of a star. "L...der..." he croaks, fading in and out of existence. "You...fine?"

"Of course," she replies, even as her tongue catches on fire. A wan smile slips past her lips. "We're all okay. I told you we'd be."

Yamamoto tries to laugh, but the sound is broken up into bits and pieces. His fingers begin to disappear as the data of his particles breaks down into the size of nothing and blinks out of existence, as they said the phase is wont to do.

"Lea...er," he says. "You...lie."

She gazes at him.

And then, slowly, she gets onto her knees and crawls toward him, ignoring the way her wounds brush reddish against the dirt. Her fingers close over her umbrella out of pure reflex. Yamamoto rolls over onto his shoulder, facing her.

"Did...did any...one...?"

The leader casts one last glance at the vanishing bodies of her samurai. She tears her eyes away. "No."

"And...I am..."

"You're phasing, along with everyone else."

"Dy...ing?"

"Yes."

"S...ry," he says, and his eyelids flicker shut. "Not...nough...time, huh?" His feet are gone now, along with most of his arms. He seems too fleeting a person.

"They got to the control panels," she says in explanation. There's no point in trying to guess the details of what could have happened. Her hatch, she knows, was the safest out of the ten; it was the one they spent the most time proofing while they worked with the test objects. Every particle, from the fibers of her clothes to the scabs traced around her knuckles, has been successfully transferred.

She should have switched places with him, with any of them. If only -

"C...n't feel...my legs..." Yamamoto murmurs, in a voice barely louder than the wind's whisper. He is looking at her again. "C...n't feel...em." He is scared again, she knows, and he is far braver than her to confide his fears. "Don'...wanna d...ie..."

Her fingers find his, somehow, and lace with them. The other hand cradles his cheek, even though his skin doesn't feel like anything. "Thank you, Yamamoto," she says, pouring an ocean into those words. "I can do it from here. You did good."

"Yeah?" He musters up a wavering smile. "Glad...then."

The rest of his torso begins to fizzle out into nothing, along with the highlights of his face. "Pro...mise," he says. "And...re...mber."

"I will."

"Thir...ty..."

"I know."

"Yeah." The samurai is barely a shadow on the floor, and yet his smile is bright and she is far too undeserving of it. "Plea...sure...figh...ing...b'side..."

His image stops, shudders, and blinks out in a blaze of static and empty data. And so she is left holding the memory of a hand and a face and a soul, alone in an unknown world, injured, terrified, and without a single one of her samurai to watch over and give her courage; without a single person that ever stayed behind.

"Likewise," she says.

Then, the first seize of panic takes hold of her body, and as the flame behind her eyes explodes in rivulets of rivers of waterfalls, she finds herself - at the same time - in a strange, suspended state. Although her tears are streaming and her mouth is open in a smiling snarl, she does not feel a single thing besides tranquility.

For nine of her men, she has two-hundred-seventy seconds.

And so the leader who is no longer a leader leans back and begins the countdown of mourning, from two-hundred-seventy seconds to one.


End file.
